The 10th Vinacas Golden Cashew Rendezvous will take place in Ha Long city, the northeastern province of Quang Ninh, in October, according to the Vietnam Cashew Association (Vinacas).

Nearly 500 businesses from 50 countries and territories are expected to participate.

Vinacas will hold bilateral exchanges and dialogues among domestic and foreign cashew nut enterprises along with a workshop on the sector’s development vision and strategies, a seminar on cleaner production of cashew nuts for the public health and a forum on the quality of imported raw cashew nuts.

The conference aims to support trade exchanges and promotion for businesses and help them expand markets as well as increase incomes for farmers.

In 2018, the cashew nut sector aims to cut volume while increasing quality to reach the export target of more than 3.7 billion USD, about 65 percent of global export value.

Vinacas forecast the sector will enter a new period of development in 2019 with the building of a production value chain and deployment of measures to increase quality, trace of origin of products, and deep processing, and develop the domestic market to raise the trade value of the sector to 4 billion USD.

The first Vinacas Golden Cashew Rendezvous was held in the southeastern province of Binh Phuoc in 2008. Two years later, Vietnam became the world’s leading exporter of cashew nuts.

Vietnam exported 141,000 tonnes of cashew in the first five months of 2018, raking in more than 1.39 billion USD, according to the Foreign Trade Agency under the Ministry of Industry and Trade.

The figures showed a rise of 21.4 percent in volume and 25.3 percent in value year-on-year.

In May alone, 35,000 tonnes of cashew were exported with revenue of 330 million USD, up 8.8 percent in volume and 6.4 percent in value compared to the previous month.

Export cashew price hit an average of 9,867 USD per tonne in January-May, up 3.2 percent year-on-year.

Vietnamese cashew is sold in more than 90 countries and territories. The country achieved its highest-ever cashew exports in a year in 2017 with 353,000 tonnes of cashew kernels exported for 3.52 billion USD, a year-on-year increase of 1.9 percent in volume and 23.8 percent in value.